


The Yellow Fog

by Kleenexwoman



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Aging, Angst, Coffee, Gen, Near Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Napoleon, retired from active duty, spends his days at UNCLE peacefully drinking coffee and watching the new agents learn the ropes. Maybe that's really all that's going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Yellow Fog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayamaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayamaia/gifts).



His feet and hands know the way even when his memory doesn't. He never takes the subway, for this reason—the rocking of the car can lull you to sleep, trick you into thinking you've glided to the next stop when you're all the way to Shell Beach. He knows how many steps it takes, once you turn, to get to Del Floria's. He knows which door to knock on even when the door has changed color, whether it's sunk down below sidewalk level or elevated by four concrete steps. His hands do it for him. His feet know which changing stall to walk to, his hands know which clotheshook to turn. His face knows to smile at the girl at the front desk and what to do with his badge, although these days it's as likely to be a fresh-faced boy. Interns. That puts him off his stride a little, but not enough for his face to forget to smile. Not enough so that his feet can't remember the twists and turns through the perfectly identical corridors to his office, can't pick just the right unmarked door to stop in front of. His fingers tap a short beat on his thigh, remembering how long it takes for the door to register his presence and slide gently open, and his feet know the number of steps it takes to get to the chair where his body remembers precisely how to sink into it. 

His back protests a little. He can hear the creaking of his vertebrae in his eardrums, can feel the hot tang of pain flashing up and down his spine and into his legs. If the chair wasn't so familiar, the desk unchanged, he would consider it a warning from a body that can sense danger now before his mind can. But the pain and the aches and the stiffness and the creaking is perhaps the only concrete sign he has that he's grown old, that so many decades have passed since the last time he earned an injury that would have justified this kind of strain. It's strange to wake up and realize that the ache in your joints and the stiffness in your limbs isn't due to the beating you took last night, isn't something that will go away with a few days' bed rest and the relaxing effects of a scotch and soda, but something that emanates from your bones and your heart and will be there when you wake every morning, like a wife you can't divorce. 

There is a cup of coffee on his desk. It's in a yellow porcelain mug and there's a U.N.C.L.E. logo plastered onto it. Napoleon doesn't remember getting the coffee. He can't remember if someone (a girl in a yellow skirt or a fresh-faced boy in a yellow polo, with a globe embroidered over the heart) brought him the coffee, or left it on his desk a few minutes before he walked into the office. Is he that predictable? His body is that predictable. His routine is that predictable. He is here five days a week, from nine in the morning until five at night. The worst part is that he can't pinpoint when this started, when his body adapted like this. There was never a time when he stood in front of Waverly and asked to be taken off of active duty. There was no notice announcing that it was time to retire, time to park his ass behind a desk and study papers all day. It's just that everything he has ever done, the car chases and the gunfights and the running and the deception, is all stuffed into a box inside his head marked “The Past” and he doesn't know when this happened. 

A cup of hot coffee. A black marker and a red pen. A black three-ring binder. It's all laid out neatly on his desk, and he has no idea if he put all of this there last night before he left the office or if someone came into his office before the sun rose and placed them there. And this doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if his hands have ever touched these things before. He opens the three-ring binder and stares at the information inside, his eyes skimming the page over and over before he can remember what it is and what he's supposed to be doing. 

It's a transcript of a conversation. U.N.C.L.E. is trying to streamline its information gathering, switching over from the old-fashioned wiretap monitoring and transcription to an automatic transcriber. The problem with the automatic transcriber is that it's not terribly good at what it does, and so human intervention is needed to go over the transcriptions and seek out any egregious errors before passing them on to Section IV to be sorted through and filed. His job is now to seek out typographical errors in the automatic transcriptions. He is meant to do this from nine in the morning to five at night, barring two fifteen-minute coffee breaks and one half-hour for lunch. He takes the red pen and begins scanning through the lines. 

_This is an insult,_ says a voice inside his head. Familiar, but not his voice. _This is busywork. It's pointless. They're throwing you a bone. It's worse than an insult, it's pity. And you're sitting there and just doing it?_

The red pen scratches a bloody line across the paper. He sits back and shuts his eyes tight, trying to block out the voice. It's like an ache in his back, in his heart. “I'm lucky to have this. I'm lucky they didn't toss me out on the street, when I can barely do anything more. What would you want me to do?” 

_Lucky. That's what you call it. Did you ever think you'd be correcting typographical errors in something a computer spat out? That's for Section V. Secretaries, interns. Weren't you going to be Number One, Section One? Wasn't that promised to you?_

“This is as good as a promise,” Napoleon mutters. He was never promised anything. He wanted to earn it. He could have, but for—what? Whatever made his memory full of holes and slippery. Whatever made it so hard to think the way he used to. If things had gone the right way, yes, he would have been sitting in that big office with the smell of pipe smoke and tea still in the air, he would have been pulling all the strings and plotting and planning and pushing agents together and tearing them apart when they really weren't a good fit. But the idea of all that planning and all that careful manipulation makes a dull throb start behind his temples, and he knows he has to watch his blood pressure nowadays so he stops it. Looks at the gunmetal grey walls and thinks of nothing. 

One line at a time. One word at a time. One letter at a time. 

The transcription doesn't differentiate between speakers. It seems to recognize human language and sounds, but the onomatopoeia isn't very good. The whole thing reads like a stream-of-consciousness poem, written by someone in a smoky cafe with a black turtleneck and black jeans and blonde hair and blue eyes and—

_Just read it, Napoleon._

**[clank] [clank] eye didn't no anyone was coming [pause] know of course you would have run if you'd none [pause] you insult me [pause] know eye no you [pause] it's so insulting to be known [pause]**

He reads the words aloud to himself. No I, no you. Know I, know you. No, I know you. Is there any difference between any of these phrases? Is any one of them more meaningful than the other? 

**you've come all this way I might as well offer you tea aha or maybe something a little stronger no I've given that up perhaps I don't know you anymore it's nothing personal I had to give a lot of things up**

**[the sound of water moving over stones]**

**did you mean to give me up or was I just collateral damage**

**[the sound of a scream]**

**there was so much collateral damage anyway**

He underlines **[the sound of a scream]** , brow furrowed. The image is not unclear in his mind's eye, playing out on a silver screen like a noir movie. A tall blonde in black, swaying into a room, a fragment of unwelcome memory come to life. Two hands around a slim neck. Isn't that the most likely scenario, or has his ability to read from context deteriorated, carefully trained skills replaced by fevered imaginings from the Late Late Show? He lives a life where he can no longer remember whether something he did ten years ago is something he did ten years ago or something the A-Team did on last night's episode. Anyway, this is not his job. Anything he could understand would mean nothing to anyone. 

**eye only wanted to understand why you left you sound like I jilted you I assure you that is not the case it's the only thing I can think of you really can't think of any other reason why I might have left [pause] is your memory that unreliable or are you just that self-centered oh let's just say both**

It's a lover's spat. Nothing more, nothing less. This would be useless to Intelligence, just one more page of dross they have to sift through. Napoleon's hands find the silvery tabs on the top and bottom of the binder and pull them back. The silver rings surrender with an antiseptic clicking sound, and he lifts the offending page from the binder and slides it into his desk drawer. 

The next page is from an entirely different transcript. **won five tree seven ate to eleven nein no no no no no no no no no no won five tree seven ate to eleven nein no no no no no no no no no no** and so on and so on. This is easier to correct, and he spends a peaceful and thoughtless morning carefully blacking out words and replacing them with meticulously written numerals. Numbers stations are like lullabies, and he's spent more exhausted mornings than he can recall listening to a soothing voice read out coded information while he dozes. 

_I suppose this can be counted as a vacation, then._ Illya plants his hands on Napoleon's desk, reading the letters upside-down. _But I wouldn't imagine your idea of a vacation is a week in an office with a red pen and scheduled breaks._

“I don't have the energy to hop around the world any more,” Napoleon says. “All those years we spent not remembering where we went to sleep, opening your eyes and not knowing whether you'd see bricks or bars or the morning sunlight—that's all in the past.” 

_Then you should be in a hotel bar with two girls, one for either arm._ Illya grins. _Me in the corner waiting for you to get done with them._

“I don't know any girls. You'll have to introduce me to some.” Napoleon bends his head over the paper, looking up at Illya through the greying hair that falls over his eyes. 

_Napoleon Solo doesn't know any girls?_ Illya shakes his head. _How times have changed._

“They're all old ladies now.” Clara is pudgy, smiles more than he ever knew her to, and has two children she showed him pictures of last time they met. He remembers looking at the photographs and wondering what they might have looked like if they had been his. Marion is wearing blazers with shoulderpads and has a stock portfolio, or so he sees when her name jumps out at him in the society pages he skims every so often. Angelique has a cane, a fashionable mahogany one with a silver snake's head but she does need it, and she can only speak out of one side of her mouth; one half of her face is lined, the skin beginning to droop with age, the lips thin and pale, but the other half is as smooth and fine as it was when he was thirty-five, her lips still red and full, frozen in time. She wanted to talk, last time they met. Just talk. She held his hands and apologized, and she seemed sincere, but he had no idea what she was apologizing for. When she left, half of her face looked at him with pity. 

The door slides open, and Napoleon looks up. _Illya found me a girl,_ he thinks, but it's someone he knows. Her name is Brandy, perhaps? Sherry? No, Shelley. She's blonde and wears her hair in a ponytail, and her face is at once open and friendly and completely unreadable. She's a junior agent, Section III, and she's supposedly terrifyingly efficient. 

“Hi!” she says, opening her eyes wide and turning up the corners of her mouth. “How are we doing today?” 

Napoleon pushes his chair back from the desk and tents his fingers in his lap. “Wonderful, Shelley. And yourself?” 

“Oh good, good.” Shelley pushes an errant strand of blonde hair back. Her black tie is knotted perfectly, her shirt starched and crisp, and he can just make out the embroidered UNCLE logo over her heart, not quite hidden by the black leather of her holster. When did they start making agents wear uniforms? Whose idiotic idea was it to stamp the logo on everything? How can you possibly go undercover that way? “I just wanted to stop by and check the files you received today, OK? Ms. Rogers believes there's been a misclassification of some documents, and we're trying to make sure that everyone in who's on the Transcription project doesn't have anything past their security level.” She reaches over to the binder on Napoleon's desk and begins to flip briskly through it before he can say anything. 

Napoleon shrugs, watching her. “Of course.” He nods to the girl who's followed her in, a dark-complected woman with intricately braided hair. “Hello, miss.” 

The darker woman reaches past Shelley and holds out her hand to Napoleon. She has long, tangerine fingernails. “Hi,” she says. “I'm Ameera. Section III. I'm Shelley's new partner.” 

Napoleon shakes her hand and gives her his warmest smile. “Any friend of Shelley's,” he says. 

“I've heard so much about you.” Ameera places her hand on his desk. Shelley is still looking through the binder, making soft _hmm_ sounds, her brow furrowed. “You know, some of your affairs are used as case studies for us new kids. We actually just got done going over your Monarch Affair.” 

Napoleon's smile freezes. “I'm sorry, I don't think that was one of mine.” 

“It was definitely you,” Ameera insists. “Your strategy for infiltrating the Labyrinth compound was groundbreaking. The sheer amount of research involved combined with the reliance on soft skills...Our instructor used it as the basis for an entire training module.” 

“Ameera, stop bothering the man.” Shelley closes the binder. “If he says it wasn't one of his, it wasn't, and you don't need to remind him of it.” She gives Napoleon a blinding smile, and pats the binder. “All good.” 

“Glad to hear it.” Napoleon rises, nodding to the women. “Thanks for stopping by.” 

Shelley begins to herd Ameera out. Ameera frowns. “But it was him—there was a picture in the file and everything. And unless Napoleon is someone else's code name...” 

“We'll talk about it later.” Shelley pushes Ameera gently out the door. She stops in the doorway and turns. “Oh,” she says to Napoleon, “who was that you were talking to when I came in?” 

Napoleon shakes his head, a little embarrassed. “Nobody. I hadn't realized I was speaking out loud—I was just imagining my old partner was here.” 

“Your old partner?” Shelley tilts her head to the side. 

“Illya Kuryakin. We worked together for over a decade. He, ah...” Napoleon realizes he isn't quite sure what happened to Illya. He was here, and then he was not, but what in between? 

“Hm.” Shelley purses her lips. “Never heard of him.” And then there is a bouncing ponytail, and then only a closed door. 

*

Section VI has changed. Gone are the huge filing cabinets, the computers that took up entire walls and entire rooms. Napoleon remembers one of the secretaries teaching him to use the punch cards, how to feed mysteriously perforated sheets into the computer's hungry maw one by one. Now it's a tangle of beige boxes, black screens with green letters, thick beige cables tangling themselves into fractals like a spider's web. 

He is leaning over the shoulder of a blonde, eager young man named Kevin. Kevin is capable of typing 120 WPM and is engaged in programming a “search engine,” as he so proudly has told Napoleon. Napoleon vaguely imagines some kind of spiderlike contraption capable of flipping through manila folders at intense speed. “So can you get the files for me?” Napoleon asks. 

“Should be easy,” Kevin says. He flashes Napoleon a guileless smile, and his hands fly across the keyboard. His smile turns quickly into a frown. “I'm sorry, sir, but access has been denied.” 

“What do you mean?” Napoleon cranes his neck to look at the computer screen. “I know I have that clearance.” 

“Sorry. You just don't.” 

“It must be a mistake,” Napoleon insists. “Did you spell my name right?” 

Kevin rolls his eyes. “S-O-L-O,” he says. “I double-checked your number and your security clearance and everything. And no, you're not allowed to see them.” 

“But they're _my_ files. These are reports I wrote myself about things _I_ did,” Napoleon explains, trying to sound reasonable. “Does it make any sense that they're above my security classification?” 

Kevin shrugs. “It's not up to me to say. The files may have been annotated with information that is above your security clearance. If you really want them...” He slides a piece of paper towards Napoleon. “This is a Security Waiver information request form.” Napoleon realizes that Kevin is speaking slowly to him, with deliberate enunciation, as though he were talking to a small child. “What you do is you put your name, your number, the information you want, and why you want it. Then you give it back to me or someone in this room, and if Ms. Rogers thinks it's all right, you'll get the information.” 

Napoleon grimaces slightly and stuffs the paper into his pocket, crinkling it up ostentatiously. “Thanks for all your help,” he mutters. 

“No problem!” Kevin beams. 

Napoleon turns on his heel, then thinks better of it. “Kevin,” he says, “does that contraption of yours list when my security clearance was changed?” 

Kevin types in a few words, and they both wait patiently for the information to load. “Security classification altered September 13th, 1973. It doesn't say what your classification was before—that in itself is classified—but that's when the change was made.” 

Napoleon thinks about writing the information down on the paper in his pocket. He takes Kevin's pen and writes it down on his wrist, pressing the ballpoint tip of the pen into his flesh. Paper is as bad as memory, but some part of him wants to imprint this deep into his body. 

*

**why did you leave I just couldn't stand it anymore stand what you mean you didn't see it coming [pause] [pause] [pause] didn't see what coming do you mean us god no I never would have left for that well that says a lot about us both doesn't it**

Napoleon is having a hard time figuring out where each speaker takes over. The transcription strips out any pause shorter than a few seconds without an indication of time, any emphasis or inflection, anything meaningful. Without these, the conversation is a running stream of consciousness, like the thought processes of someone who's been hit on the head far too many times or a man having a conversation with some other side of his soul. 

**you never knew I suppose just used to whatever comes but I have seen things change in my life before and I wasn't going to stay around for it all the suspicion the drama the secrecy I couldn't take it anymore and if I couldn't stop it I certainly wasn't going to be part of it I really don't know what you mean things were going as they always did sure there was a crackdown in security but we needed it things were very lax my god I can't believe you're justifying it**

**[glass breaking]**

**[fists pounding on a door]**

**[a dull thud of unknown origin]**

*

Shelley slides into the seat across from him in the commissary, a steaming Styrofoam cup in her hand. “I got you some more coffee,” she says, and places it on the table next to his plate. “You looked tired when we came to see you.” 

The coffee smells burnt and acidic, and Napoleon's stomach flips a little. “I shouldn't drink as much as I do,” he says, and pushes it away gently. “I have trouble sleeping.” 

Shelley nods, her face a mask of concern. “PTSD?” 

Napoleon shakes his head. “I'm certain it's just the coffee.” 

“Do you want me to bring you herbal tea in the mornings instead?” Shelley asks. 

Napoleon frowns. “That's been you leaving coffee on my desk?” 

“I go by your office in the morning. I thought I might as well,” Shelley says, and gives Napoleon a small smile. “You do drink it, don't you?” 

“Of course I do.” Napoleon plasters a smile on his face. “It's very kind of you.” There's a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach now, acrid and burnt-tasting like the coffee. 

“Kevin says you were trying to look up your own files.” Shelley lifts her cup of tea to her lips and takes a soundless sip. “What were you doing that for?” 

“Just some light lunchtime reading.” Napoleon pushes the iceberg lettuce and chopped ham that comprises his lunch around on the plastic place. “Memories of years gone by.” 

“Don't bother yourself with that.” Shelley has a small plastic cup of macaroni salad in front of her. “It's certainly not appropriate material to bring into the lunchroom, anyway. If you want something fun to read I'll bring you the new Tom Clancy. My dad likes those.” 

“I don't want another novel. Fiction never gets anything right. It never tells you the important things.” 

Shelley reaches across the table, covers Napoleon's hand with hers. She looks into his eyes. “I'm worried about you,” she says. “You can't wallow in memory. You've got to stay in the present.” 

Napoleon pulls his hand away and stands up. “You can say that,” he says. “How old are you? Twenty-five?” 

“I turned twenty-seven last month,” Shelley says. “You know that.” 

“You're still living the present,” Napoleon says. “When you're my age, you'll understand. You'll look back and all you'll have is the memories of what you're doing now. That'll be the important thing.” 

He wants to go outside, but he thinks he takes a wrong turn. Shelley is there, somehow, with her hand on his shoulder. “Listen, old man,” she says into his ear, “the past is dangerous. They took it away for a reason.” And he finds himself in his office, staring at the same transcripts, with the same cup of coffee. Even the salad he left in the cafeteria is there. 

He bends his head over the paper and gets to work. 

**they were going to take everything away from us and I couldn't stand it I was surprised you stayed but perhaps it was not so surprising I don't know if you didn't see it coming or if you didn't care or didn't believe it**

He knows that the past happened, it's there and crystalline perfect inside of his memory, but when he tries to remember any one thing it melts like snow. He can remember peoples' faces and how they are, what he said to them and what he felt for them; he can remember places, the smell of a river or the vertigo of a skyscraper or the sound of a smoky nightclub; he can remember tastes and sounds and how to pick a lock and how to roll out of the way when something explodes and how to climb up a coal chute and drug a drink. He cannot remember the whys at all. He was in Venice, in Morocco, in the Arctic Circle, in France and India and Tokyo and Hong Kong and the Serengeti Plains and he cannot remember why he was there or what he was doing at all. 

They have taken his memory. Have they? He knows how it works—you decide you want to quit, you go into a little room for a while and have bits of your memory scraped out, then you go on your merry way and get married or go into advertising or whatever it is you want to do. He's met women on the street who used to be in Section V who think they used to work in an accounting or sales agency with him. He was never sure if they were given some kind of cover story or allowed to fill in the blanks themselves. Never asked anyone. 

But it's always clean. Sometimes they just take out classified information, and sometimes they give you a whole new past with a whole new job. You're not supposed to remember that you don't remember—that's the point. And there's not supposed to be any damage, not like this. Either they did it wrong, or... 

September 1973. Why would they have done this? He didn't quit, and he doesn't remember threatening to. He never would have. UNCLE was going to be his life—he had never stopped believing in the ideals of international cooperation and world peace. He had imagined dying long before retirement in some necessary and self-sacrificing way, taking his last breath knowing that the world would be safe for one more week because of him. And now he's lived on longer than he thought he would, long past the point of being useful to anyone. Oh, UNCLE has taken care of him, given him busywork to do. When you're loyal to something, they take care of you. He never even got married, though he dreamed of it sometimes. They might have taken his memory if he'd gotten married, but he's certain he never did—he doesn't come home to a wife, and he doesn't come home to a space a woman's death might have left. There's no lonesome ring anywhere but on his little finger, where it's always been. If he'd married, he would have never taken it off, even if she'd died. If he'd left her. If she'd left him. 

He sits and stares at his hand. Someone left him. 

_I never left. Not really._ Illya sits on the corner of his desk, pages through his folder. The ghostly fingers come to rest on a line of gibberish. _And that's Russian, right there._

“Huh.” Napoleon makes a note of it in the margin. “See, I need you around for these things. You always catch what I don't.” 

_I know. But you don't always listen._

“I do most of the time,” says Napoleon. “I have to tune out the whining.” 

_I do not whine! I grouse. There's a difference._

Napoleon grins. It's almost like old times. 

_They were going to take everything away from us and I couldn't stand it,_ says Illya. _I was surprised you stayed, but perhaps it was not so surprising. I don't know if you didn't see it coming or if you didn't care or didn't believe it._

Napoleon rubs his forehead. “They were taking us off active duty early,” he says, “that's all. The rule about retiring at 40 is a guideline. Once you get hit in the head too many times, you're no use...and we saw a lot of action.” 

Illya plants his hands on the desk. _I'm not talking about active duty. That's the least of it._

“That's the whole of it,” Napoleon says. “Imagine—you could be right here next to me, looking for misspelled words in what a computer hears.” 

_I'd rather be dead. Or in Pittsburgh._

“Is my company that unbearable to you?” 

_No, but the coffee is._

Napoleon carefully pours the coffee out into the wastebasket. “We should get away sometime,” he says. “I'm tired of looking at beige walls. How much vacation time do you think we've saved up? A month? A year?” 

_Forever, no doubt._

“Do you remember when we used to take our vacations together? We could do that again.” It's good to see Illya, he thinks. It's been far too long. “Where do you want to go? It's been a long time since we've seen Paris.” 

_I hate Paris. Bad memories. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, no...cheap hotels and catacombs. Join UNCLE and see the world, they said..._

“Well, all right. Not Paris. Your turn to pick, then.” 

_Russia. You should go to Russia. It's beautiful this time of year._

“Illya, it's almost winter. I know about Russian winters.” 

_It's beautiful all the time._

There is a knock at the door, and then it slides open. It's Ameera. 

“You know,” Napoleon says, “you don't have to knock. The doors open automatically.” 

Ameera shrugs. “It's polite,” she says, and then smiles. “Were you talking to your partner again?” 

Napoleon looks around. The room is empty except for him and Ameera. “He was just here,” he said. “He came in for a visit. I'm sorry you missed him; he must have slipped out when you came in. He's very sneaky.” 

Ameera frowns slightly. “Was he really here?” 

“Oh, yes,” Napoleon assures her. “He was on assignment. In Russia. But he came back. They never took him off active duty, did you know that? Almost as old as me and he's still going.” 

He can see Ameera bite her lip, uncertainty blossoming over her face. She touches her ear and lowers her voice. “Agent Ameera to Section VI. Please review security tapes in Bloc 7 for any anomalies.” 

“What did you want?” Napoleon asks. “I know you're not coming by just to keep an old man company.” 

Ameera shrugs. “It's a slow day. Shelley's going over some paperwork that's above my classification level, and I thought I'd make a coffee run.” She places a steaming cup on Napoleon's desk. “I got you herbal tea. Shelley said that's what you're drinking now. It's chamomile,” she adds. 

Ameera is a terrible liar, Napoleon thinks, and she shows it in her smile, going from something natural and warm to the same plastic rictus Shelley sports. It's in the eyes. Subterfuge can be taught, but those who have to learn it are never quite as convincing as natural liars. Ameera has a very long way to go. “Nice of you to think of me sitting alone and thirsty in here,” he says. 

A real smile, this time. “It just seems so odd,” Ameera says. “We keep reading your old case files in training, and it always sounds like you're some kind of superhero. But then here you are, sitting at a desk and taking coffee breaks with us...” 

“Well,” Napoleon says. “All that was a long time ago.” Decades, he thinks, decades since he was a superhero. 

“I'm sorry,” Ameera says. “I shouldn't have said that. It's probably hard to be stuck in a little office when you spent so much time out in the field.” 

Napoleon leans back a little in his chair, stretches out. “It's not what I would have wanted. But you only get so long in the field—someday, you'll be me. I swear I'm still trying to adjust to sitting around like this, even though it's been so long that I've forgotten everything I've done.” He chuckles, hoping it sounds like a joke. “You mentioned the Monarch Affair—what did you learn about it?” 

“Well, Ms. Dancer said that what she always took away from that one is 'If you're in a maze, the surest way to get lost is to try to find your way out. If they're playing a game with you, the surest way to lose is to play and hope you'll win. They'll never let you. Break down the walls and go for the jugular',” Ameera recites. 

“Ms. Dancer? April? She's an instructor?” Napoleon can't remember her being much older than nineteen. “Never mind that. Tell me more about it. What did I do? What did Illya do?” 

Ameera looks puzzled. “Your imaginary friend?” She claps her hand to her mouth, her eyes going wide. “Oh, gosh, I'm sorry. It's just that...” She bites her lip again. It's a very big tell, Napoleon thinks, and Shelley or someone else had better let her know that before it gives something away to someone who's not as friendly as he is. “I did look up your friend, and you know, he's not in our databases at all. None of your affair reports mention him anywhere.” 

Napoleon leans across the desk. “Well, Ameera, you know what?” He lowers his voice, like he's telling her a secret. “He was there, right next to me, for years. And he wrote most of those reports.” 

Ameera shakes her head. “I couldn't find anything on him. And the reports didn't look like they'd been expunged very much at all, just the usual civilian names and stuff we block out.” She puts her hand on Napoleon's arm. “I really shouldn't be telling you this, I guess, but...I wanted you to know.” 

“Thank you,” Napoleon murmurs. 

Ameera gives him an uncertain smile, then puts her finger to her ear and gazes off into the distance.   
Whatever the new communicators are, they're quite good; Napoleon can't even see them. “Nobody saw your friend,” she says. “Are you sure he was here, Napoleon?” 

Napoleon sits back and folds his hands over his lap, considering. He does imagine Illya here sometimes, very vividly. Sometimes it can be hard to remember that he's not here, that Illya hasn't grown old and desk-bound next to him, or to fantasize that he's just gone out on a mission and that's why he's not here much. 

But he realizes, suddenly, that his head is clearer than it has been for some time. He's gotten so used to being perpetually in fog that he's forgotten what it's like to see clearly, to be able to think well, even a little bit. 

Napoleon shakes his head. “Some days are better than others,” he says. “I just wish I could remember. I've lost so much.” 

*

**you were disloyal [a very long pause; perhaps someone has left the room] it wasn't me who was disloyal it was them I was always the same and they changed it all on us**

**[a pile of logs dropping to a concrete floor, one after another]**

**that's just a smokescreen you sold us out didnt you I told you it was them who sold out not me I always main tamed my integrity don't give me that holier than thou act you always had [pause] this isn't about principles anymore it's about what happened**

**[people come and people go]**

**I just want to know who you sold us out to**

**[they come and go]**

**you don't know that that's what happened and I don't know why you suspect me you won't answer a goddamn thing I ask you i've come all this way i've come all this way and you don't want to talk to me**

**[the whistle of a train and a dam bursting its walls]**

**but you've come all this way and that's all that matters**

*

When Napoleon steps into the UNCLE the next morning, he nearly chokes on the smell of plastic burning and cordite in the air. The fresh-faced receptionist at the desk is gone. A klaxon sounds, distantly, and red lights flash. 

He can feel the old rush of adrenaline flooding through his body, his limbs and sinews stiffening, his heart pounding. He draws his UNCLE special and drops into a crouch, surveying the area. There are no footsteps, nothing vibrating the ground. The distant sound of gunshots echoes through the halls, but it's so faint and coming from so many directions that he doesn't think it's very near. 

UNCLE has been attacked. Occupied. The door shouldn't have opened for him, the entire compound should have been sealed off. The invasion must have been incredibly well-planned. They must have infiltrated nearly everything and then attacked all at once, suddenly, before any defensive measures could be taken. How could he have let this happen? How could anyone have let this happen? This is catastrophic, unprecedented. This could mean the end of UNCLE as he knows it. 

Napoleon digs in his pocket for his communicator. There it is, the old ballpoint pen model that he'd thought to be obsolete. He ducks behind the reception desk and activates it. “Open Channel D. Open Channel D.” Just static. Channel D is down. Channel F is down as well. There is only static on every channel he tries. All communications are down. He can hear shouting, orders being barked that he cannot make out; they are distant and they echo. 

Nobody is around. He cannot hear footsteps, he cannot hear any noises getting nearer. The area is unguarded. All of the fighting must be taking place elsewhere, deep inside the compound. He could charge into the fray, but he has absolutely no idea what is going on, how many THRUSH there are (he's certain it must be THRUSH, who else would do this?), what areas are being held and which have been taken, how many agents are still alive. 

There was a time when he would have gone anyway, gun at the ready and praying for luck. But he's far too old for that now and he knows it, too slow and too weak, more likely to be a liability than an asset. He should stay here. The entrance isn't covered, someone needs to do it, and it might as well be him. 

It's only a few minutes before the door slides open. Two figures, unfamiliar, both women, one blonde and one dark, and he aims his gun— 

“Napoleon! Shit!” Shelley throws herself in front of Ameera, pushing the younger woman out of the room. She draws her own gun, keeping it trained on him, finger off the trigger. “What the hell are you doing? Where did you get a live weapon?” 

He's crouching under his desk in his office. The smell of cordite has been replaced by the smell of dust, bleach, and stale coffee. “It's my old UNCLE special,” he says, lowering the barrel. “Dug it out of my closet the other day. A little clunky, but it's got a lot of character.” 

“Is there live ammo in there?” Shelley pushes the barrel of his gun down to the floor. Napoleon doesn't resist. She takes the gun from him and checks the ammunition chamber. “Yeah. Live ammo.” He watches her remove the bullets, slip them into her blazer pocket, and hand the gun to a cowering Ameera. “You aren't even supposed to have this. I'm officially confiscating it.” 

He would admire her competence under any other circumstances. “This is just the base. I do still have the other attachments, you know.” 

“That's great,” Shelley mutters. “Just great. Oh, and thanks for traumatizing my rookie. Jesus Christ _bananas_.” She glances back at Ameera. “You all right?” 

Ameera nods. “If I can't handle a gun being pointed at me suddenly, I'm not cut out for this.” She gives Shelley a small smile. “They did this kind of stuff all the time in training, remember? I'm fine. It was just a surprise.” 

“Any other surprises for us?” Shelley asks. She holsters her gun and crosses her arms, frowning. It's the first authentic expression Napoleon can remember seeing on her face. “Anthrax, maybe, or a pocket EMP?” 

“It was just my old piece,” Napoleon says. “A nostalgia trip.” He crawls out from under his desk and stands up, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “You don't have to search me. I promise.” 

Shelley sighs. “Obviously, this needs to be reported.” 

“Why?” Napoleon asks. “In my day, we did this all the time. Wouldn't have been a problem as long as nobody got shot.” He smiles, remembering. “Did I ever tell you about the time Illya nearly split my head open with some kind of spiked concrete block contraption he was using as a pinata?” 

“It's not your day anymore,” Shelley snaps, “and this whole thing is completely inappropriate. Come on, Ameera—” 

“I'll stay here,” Ameera interrupts. She hands the gun to Shelley, holding it with her fingertips as though handing over a used tissue. “I'll make sure there are no other problems.” 

“All right. If there's an issue...” Shelley taps her ear. 

Ameera echoes her tap. “I know. Help is only a phone call away.” 

Shelley grips the UNCLE special and leaves. Napoleon sighs. “I'm going to miss that gun. Haven't used it for years, but it was always nice to know I had it around.” 

Ameera glances around the room, then leans in close. “Napoleon, what was that about? Why did you bring in your gun? Were you going to shoot us?” 

Napoleon shakes his head. “I don't know. I came in, and UNCLE was under attack. Nobody was here, and I could hear gunfire...and then you came in.” 

Ameera frowns. “But you know where you are now? And when?” Napoleon nods. “So you were...what, hallucinating? Oh! The same way you thought your friend was here...” 

He shakes his head, suddenly realizing the common thread between his dreams. When he sees Illya, it's never the aging Illya he imagines, wrinkled and lined with age—it's always a young Illya, Illya as he first met him. Almost a boy. And in the split second between aiming the gun at Shelley and having the attack dissolve, he had thought that it was all familiar somehow. “No. Flashbacks.” 

“When you aimed the gun at us...where did you think you were? In the Labyrinth compound?” Ameera looks excited. “I know you said you don't remember it, but...” 

“I was here. Right here, in UNCLE.” 

“But UNCLE's never been attacked. Not really.” 

Napoleon closes his eyes. “I can remember, now.” Memories are flooding back, everything settling into empty spaces he didn't know were there. “It all happened so suddenly.” 

He can remember crawling through the corridors with Illya at his side. Seeing men and women he'd known for years, that he'd trusted, aiming guns at him with frozen and unfriendly stares. He'd told them it was him, Napoleon, shouted it at them, and they hadn't said a word. Running through back passages and hidden doors, unable to communicate with anybody except for Illya. Not knowing who to trust, whether they didn't believe it was him or whether they were...other. Who was out for him and why. 

By the time Shelley comes back, he's sitting on his desk, narrating his memories to Ameera. “We were trapped in Mr. Waverly's office,” he says. “I'd shot two agents I trained. Shot them in the leg and pushed them out of the room, then secured it. Illya had to jam the electronic eye. I could barely think. I didn't know what to do—what was the point of defending it if they had already won?” 

“And how did it end?” Ameera asks eagerly. 

Napoleon gestures at himself, and then at the two women listening to him. “I'm here,” he says. “You're here. How do you think it ended?” 

But he's really not sure. His memory ends there, sitting with Illya behind Mr. Waverly's desk, waiting for the world to fall apart. 

*

Shelley waits until Ameera leaves the room, then gives him the news. He's scheduled for a psych evaluation and she needs to bring him. He doesn't trust her. “I know what's wrong with me,” he says. “I'm getting old, living in my memories. They don't need to evaluate that.” 

“We want to make sure there aren't any neurological problems,” Shelley says. “That's what Ms. Rogers says.” 

“Oh, no. I know that trick. You can't fool me.” He comes towards her, and he can see her shift her stance, ready to grab him and keep him from bowling her over—but he sidesteps her and he's out in the corridor. Shelley is quick but he's faster, his feet know the way in a way that his brain doesn't, and he can rely on the memories of his body. 

There are klaxons singing in his ears, and he can't trust anyone. Not the people he knows, not the people he doesn't know, not the young, not the old, not anybody except for Illya. 

_Come on, Napoleon. We'll get you out of here._ Illya draws his gun from his holster. _I'll cover you until we're out. No THRUSHie is going to get you while I'm here._

“There are dozens of agents,” Napoleon says. “We'll never make it.” 

_I made it out, and you will too._

“If they catch me, they'll take my mind. Wipe out my memory.” 

_They would do that if you stayed. You'll die before they take what's yours, I promise that. You'll die long before I ever leave you._

Illya's by his side like he always has been, like he's been for years and Napoleon just hasn't seen except for those few brief moments of clarity, the messages he's been receiving without understanding. Illya would never leave him sitting here, rotting in an office without any memory or purpose. He was a fool to think it was otherwise. 

He walks out into the sun, all fog stripped away forever.


End file.
